In another life, Luc Tellier could've spent his time lacing up skates instead of getting into character. 

“I for sure played at least a year of hockey as a tiny child,” Tellier laughs. “I made, hands down, the best snow angels of anybody on my team.”

Tellier tried out plenty of extra-curriculars while growing up, but theatre was the one that hooked him. Early classes with St Albert’s Children’s Theatre and the St. Albert Singers led to Fringe shows, post-secondary studies, and a life in the arts.

“I fell in love with it,” he recalls. “I was immediately doing plays in my basement for my very patient and loving parents.” 

Tellier’s audiences have expanded significantly since then. A graduate of the Grant MacEwan theatre program, Tellier now finds himself with a distinguished career as a performer and arts educator. He just finished performing in The Citadel Theatre’s Almost A Full Moon, and has a role in the world premiere of After Faust—part of the acclaimed RISER project series—coming up at the end of January.

Tellier’s work hasn’t gone unnoticed: he’s received the St. Albert Mayor’s Award for Emerging Artist, multiple Sterling award nominations, and a Sterling win too, for his work in Concrete Theatre’s Songs My Mother Never Sung Me.

“There was never really any question,” Tellier recalls of theatre’s resonance. “I don't even remember the first public performance that I did. I just remember always, always loving it.”

Soon after graduation, Tellier started cold-calling teachers to let him come back and teach. They said yes, and joining the educational side of the arts came as naturally to Tellier as his onstage work. He worked at beloved albertan theatre school Artstrek, and now finds himself as the Citadel Theatre’s Director of Education and Outreach.

“I feel quite lucky that I get to watch a lot of classes and teach a lot of classes where we go right back down to those basics,” he says of that role. “I'm reminded every day of the foundation of acting and of theatre.”

Those skills—empathy, connection, being vulnerable—have uses well beyond the stage, Tellier notes.

“There's kind of this misconception, I think, that acting is putting something on—it's putting on a costume, it's, armoring up,” Tellier says. “But, I think that the heart of it is actually armoring down, bringing your heart and your spirit to this stage or the classroom.

“That’s what makes us able to do published works over and over and over again and make them new,” he continues. “If there's a new artist speaking Shakespeare's words for the first time, or singing Sondheim lyrics for the first time, then it's new all over again. And that work, to me, is not done enough in the classroom and with young people. [It] shouldn't be reserved for theatre artists, because that work of sharing your opinions and your perspective is immediately transferable to any career that the students go into. It's invaluable.” 

By: Paul Blinov

To learn more about Tellier, follow him on Instagram.

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